Debby Goldsberry – Free Weed from Greed!

Debby Goldsberry is High Times 2011 Freedom Fighter of the year

Free weed from greed!

It seemed like time shifted as the ‘Brotherhood’ was honored by High Times’ Steven Hagar for their years of successful hash smuggling while they, looking like the last remaining hippies, chanted on stage. Few knew then that 100 Dutch police, including a dozen officers from the Dutch tax department, would soon be descending upon the expo.

Debby Goldsberry is an activist making inroads for canna-justice by painstakingly laying down the particular laws and policies needed to form foundational legislative change, the real work of standing up to opposition from all sides. A large dose of sweat equity makes the difference that makes Debby different. She’s a true cultural reformer.

A “if I did it, so can you” canna-business panel promoting kind, verses predatory, marketing tactics served as the backdrop to Debby’s message. That message came in a crescendo ended on a high note; don’t be greedy! A theme no few consider improper to the CUP.

Sitting from the vantage point of Barney’s booth my eyes gazed upon those in the crowd made wealthy from smuggling. ‘Knowing one’s place requires quietly listening to in-laws now and then’ was what they called it on my Italian side, and the Kennedy’s booze smuggling has always been respected by my Irish side. Just another Thanksgiving with the family.

In the crowd I spotted Bill, whom I respect for his tolerance for listening to my coffeeshop musings, as well as his success in ‘the business,’ and caught his eye. Ironically, it was at that moment Debby’s speech switched from the subject of don’t be ‘canna-business greedy’ to how to activate the government through cannabis tax returns.

I took the opportunity to ask Bill if Debby was still talking about the same greed as before. A twinkle in Bills eye briefly exposed an understanding that few outside the outlaw/prohibitionist game grasp – they both need each other to exist and have done so since civilization began. Quite Zen!

Soft hippy-smugglers seem to fade with time, the outlawed wealthy become further hardened by their under-ground isolation, the in-laws continue to hassle for ‘legal’ reform so all this bullshit can end, and the prohibitionist forever oppose cannabis for moral reasons. Thus, the Dutch police raided the very same expo in which Debby ended her speech a few hours earlier.

It turns out that the expo part of the CUP was located outside the tolerance of Amsterdam and exposed all attendees to an obscure Dutch opium law prohibiting the exchange of cannabis outside coffeeshops – and here’s where it gets good.

This being the Netherlands, and not the USA, the Dutch approach serves as a token analogy to the USA’s pepper spraying of peaceful protesting college students at Cal Davis. The Dutch police politely allowed the expo attendees the time to smoke their weed so they wouldn’t have it confiscated on the way out. Quite civil!

And the moral of the expo is the hippie’s revenge – weed freed from greed! The attendees, faced with no advantage, freed the weed like they were sent back to the 60’s by some hippy chant spell. Well, at least those lacking the smugglers way out in boxes of t-shirts.